This article posits the theory that a collective failure to recognise slavery's ability to manifest in forms other than chattel slavery has undermined attempts to abolish it by legal means, and has created confusion at the highest level in the legal discourse. The human rights law framework on slavery, in which forced labour and servitude are classified as practices related to, yet substantively distinct from, slavery, has been uncritically accepted by legal scholars. An examination of the introduction of slavery , forced labour and servitude into international law reveals that the effect, if not the purpose, of the lawmaking process which led to the global abolition of slavery was the continuance of slavery in a more acceptable form.